As a matter of fact, I have seen more teenagers as of late than I have in quite awhile.

I blogged about teens before; they are reoccurring antagonists in my writing. I am always an innocent protagonist just trying to find his way through the obstacles of life being haunted by the constant prospect of teenagers lurking all around. I am of the sound opinion that one could re-write the entire screenplay for The Walking Dead simply by finding all the references to zombies and subsequently replacing them with wild and crazy teenagers. You really wouldn’t have to change the title of the show either, just the wardrobe of the monsters. Instead of tattered flannels and torn jeans, you would need itsy-bitsy shorts with random words across the butt region, and of course skinny jeans.

In the new version of the show, the skinny jean wearing teenage boys are the weaker of the monsters. They pale in comparison to the strength and abilities of the teenage girl monster. This is not that the teenage boys aren’t a force to be reckoned with–quite the opposite actually. It is just to say that if there is a teenage girl present, the teenage boy becomes resigned to trying to please the teenage girl and momentarily forgets his original mission to ruin the lives of the grown adult.

I so badly want to tell you that there are exceptions to this rule and that there are good teenagers out there–like the Twilight version of vampires, but alas, there are no sparkling teens. If you ever believe yourself to either be the owner of one or an acquaintance thereof, you have been seduced by the worst type…the sirens of the teenage world who lure adults into a false sense of security and trust, and then boom, you and countless screaming adult argonauts are shipwrecked and left for dead.

There are no “good teenagers,” there are only teenagers who, like an alcoholic who has kicked the habit but is in constant danger of falling off the wagon, are sober from committing any variety of teenage inequities, but will most likely falter and resume terrorizing the adult of our species.

Teenage boys, while not the most dangerous of their kind, are troubling because of two things:

1.) They have not grown into their appendages. They are a clumsy breed and have trouble with seemingly easy physical movements like walking or any combination of walking and another physical activity. Their feet are awkward and they do not know what to do with their arms. They lumber around from one place to another tripping and swinging their arms with no rhythm. This is why there is a good case for my Walking Dead contention earlier. The teenage boy is, for all intents and purposes, a zombie–in skinny jeans.

2.) They are unsure about their body hair. I have said this before and I say it again. If a teenage boy can grow facial hair of any kind, they will–regardless of whether it is in their best interest. Thusly, teenage boys tend to look homeless, which again aligns itself with the Walking Dead contention from earlier paragraphs. The hairstyles which teenage boys choose to wear are another problem for me. I do not want them to depart from this habit, however. This habit makes them easily negotiable should physical violence ever become necessary. Their vision is impaired by their bangs (this is a sentence that should never be associated with men). Men should not have bangs.

Teenage girls are the meanest of any human species. I have a list of over one thousand reasons why, so I will choose a couple that you NEED to know to function out there.

1.) Utilizing shorts that they had to sneak and put on without any self-respecting father’s permission, they control the teenage boys. They are actually the brains for the entire teenage population. They are the like the queen bee, or the leader of the bugs in Starship Troopers. They are miniature women. They have not yet honed all their skills, like those of their adult form, so they are even more dangerous–think baby rattle snake who is actually deadlier than their full grown counterpart because they cannot control the release of venom. Teenage girls are scary, because they are learning to be adult women, who are actually the most powerful being ever to exist. However, adult women are allowed to be scary and powerful, because 92.3 percent of time they use their power for good (when they do not, however, countries fail, people are murdered, horrible, horrible things happen: For further examples see any show on the Lifetime Movie Network, or take a second and study the breakup of the Beatles).

2.) Teenage girls are exceptionally bad because most of the teenage girls’ parents do not believe that their teenage girls are part of the group of bad teenage girls. It’s quite simple. Even as those of you with teenagers read this blog, you are saying to yourself, “Not my teenage girl.”

**Newsflash** All of you are saying this, but what I have written is happening out there, so at least one of you are wrong.

To a certain extent this rule applies to teen boys as well, but teen boys are not as adept at looking innocent. I am sorry teen boys, but adult women have passed on to their female children an ability to manipulate that will haunt you until your dying day. As a case in point, you know, there was a time when I had PIN numbers that were original to me…Now, after years of work on my wife’s part, all our PIN numbers are ones which she brought to our relationship. Most startlingly of all, I recently found that the PIN numbers utilized in my home are the same that my Mother-in-Law uses. This absolutely confirms my worst fears: Females have a much better training program then males. Its scope and organization is irrefutably better than even the military. I am certain that if males do have a training program it consists of only one rule, and that is: 1.) If what you are doing seems to please a female, continue doing that….

I write this as a warning of our enemy, people. They are not to be discarded as weak even though skinny jeans could lead one to that assertion. Teenagers are a thinking and adapting enemy. They are trying to take over the world and our only hope is that before this can happen, they begin the turn for adulthood. However, I have started to see may teenage characteristics in young twenty something year olds. Be vigilant. Think Anti-Teen Force Protection. Act like teens are trying to kill you and you should be fine.

I just wanted you to know, because I have been holding it in since last night at the movie theater where teenagers were hellbent on ruining the movie….

The morning sun casts a peculiar glow over the hills of Ramona, California. One can feel an allusive sense of ominous foreboding. Things are not all as they should be, but why they feel it is not immediately evident. The warmth resulting from the peculiar glow, clashing with the cool breeze have pushed and pulled a dense fog up through the valleys and hills as if ghosts, unshackled from hell and the grave, search eerily for a soul to haunt. The fog is thick and invasive, and for an instant, it has swallowed up the world outside of my house leaving me surrounded by whatever it may bring.

Just as abruptly as its uninvited intrusion began, so goes the fog’s departure. What is left in its wake is a mystery. A set of footprints. A fruitless tree. A woman with an imagination as massive as the very blanket of fog, which rested thick and viscous over the house in Ramona, California. This is a story of intrigue and suspicion sure to confuse the most talented of sleuth. Holmes, The Hardy Boys, Mason, The Rescue Rangers, or Columbo, none of them could piece this thing together, because there resides no sense in this story of horror in the fog. None of them could, but Whitney can and did.

My cell phone buzzed and vibrated itself across my desk at work. It danced with and floated for a second or two making the snapping sound of hard plastic bouncing on the faux-wood desk interrupting the silent work of ten or so people.

“Hello, how are you today?” I ask immediately seeing the caller ID and noticing my lovely wife’s name.

There would be no reciprocity to my greeting that morning, instead, and in a frantic tone, “The oranges, they are all gone! Every one of them is gone, disappeared. Heath, where once there was a multitude of oranges a veritable cornucopia of beautiful deliciousness, there is nothing but emptiness.” Whitney rattled off into my ear.

When one’s wife offers up their concern over missing oranges or missing anything, the best course of action is to exude empathy, to join with them in their terror, or to nurture their investigative instincts. As such, I assert that there must be a gang of fruit loving animals roving the area stealing bushels of oranges. Having never had a fruit tree until a few weeks ago, I did not have the requisite expertise to rule out animals altogether. Although, only one night ago, the tree had tens of dozens of oranges and today there are none, not even a rotting orange biodegrading into the roots and dirt below the tree. These animals are overeating.

Whitney, absolutely not content with my assertion of a clan of bandit animals, set out on a mission to solve this mystery. Whitney offered up to me a startling find. While walking just outside our house on a freshly repaved street, still shining with new tar, Whitney found a trail of footprints that appeared out of nowhere and disappeared in the same manner. They were white like they were powdered chalk and after about ten or so steps, the footprints faded to black.

Were these the prints of an orange bandit?
What kind of criminal leaves this kind of tell-tale–the sudden chalk feet running away from the area of the fruit tree?
Firstly the oranges and now the footprints?
What kind of hellish ghoul are we dealing with?
Who steals oranges?
What kind of maniac steals only oranges and not something better; I mean go big or go home?

I tell you what, in Whitney’s head, there is only this set of possibilities: The thief is a human, and said human either floats, emits chalk out of their feet and also floats, and / or is human, loves oranges enough to steal them, but accidentally stepped in a bag of chalk that they were carrying in their car, which logically was there, because after stealing the oranges, they bandits had to hustle to a little league baseball field and prepare the baselines and batter’s box. She hasn’t quite worked out the chalk part yet.

It is under this sense of tension, that Whitney introduced a teenage boy to a 9mm. Our house overlooks the gate to the community. Whitney was looking out the window while doing the dishes. She watched as an unknown car rambled up the long road to the gate and stopped. A teenage boy jumped out of the car and began running up the hill, some three hundred yards to our home. With a rabbit killing shepherd, an aged heeler, and a three legged chihuahua in tow, Whitney met the teenager at the door. Oh yeah, and she had a gun.

The conversation was short lived and resulted in a teenage boy running faster away from our residence. Equally odd. The boy requested a tire jack to fix a flat, but after fleeing from the gun wielding Whitney, he jumped in a car with four working tires and raced off, stopping at no houses on the way out…

I don’t know anything anymore. I don’t know what I believe. I don’t know what comes in the fog, but I do know enough to tell you that I am done doubting my wife. I do not want to go the way of the running teenager. These are the reasons that I believe my wife. She has an unparalleled intuition and a gun. If she believes that the oranges were stolen by a floating, chalk footed, human of average foot size, than damn it, I believe her. So, be on the look out for two things: A floating, chalk footed, human of average foot size, and a gun wielding Whitney on a mission to solve ghostly crimes…

I just wanted you to know, because I have been holding it in for years…

We can do this together. It is going to take you being unselfish and a little trust. I need all of your support on this, or we are not going to accomplish what I am about to explain. Before I go into detail, you need to know that this is not all about me either, there is plenty to go around. Nowadays with it being so cool to be communist, this shouldn’t be that difficult to get on board with. Seriously, this could change your life for the better and in a dramatic fashion.

So gather around, suspend your negativity and listen.

The theory:

Becoming famous, and the extravagance and riches associated with said fame can be a game changer for more than the person who is the “face” of this fame. One can use the fame of the famous person to their benefit. It sounds so Machiavellian, but in this instance it is not, because all would agree that this is how it should be. The person who initially finds fame and fortune is the stepping stool for those to follow. His selfless devotion to the betterment of the whole will save the day and change countless lives.

The Argument in the converse:

The Che Guevara / Castro Possibility. In this story of communist takeover, you have what I call, unoriginally, the “totalitarian in communist’s clothing” revolution. A leader guy with seemingly good intentions gets a bunch of other people with seemingly good intentions to help him overcome the oppressive regime with seemingly ill intentions. Unfortunately, upon successfully overthrowing the oppressive regime, the leader guy, who a bunch of well intended persons thought was well intentioned, becomes decidedly oppressive himself…or at least thats the way I think it went.

This is a possibility. This is why the person we send should be someone who can shoulder the burden of power (fame) and still function the way we need them to. To act as our preverbal “coyote” shepherding those he used to find fame originally through the divide separating the plebeians from the proletarians. Without using words I just looked up to find: We can’t afford to make a person famous and then have them become a Judas, who will kiss our cheek like we never existed. The person has to be of solid character, yet believably capable of being famous.

The MC Hammer Paradox. This troublesome little tale has a skilled dancer and purveyor of words who finds fame. After achieving his goal, he brings his entire neighborhood along to share in the party. Soon, Hammer finds himself struggling to make ends meet and with nothing left of the millions his feet had earned him. Regardless of how much the man prays, he cant touch this problem and it just won’t go away. When people should have had to hold him back and beg, “Hammer, don’t hurt ’em,!!!” he just let these so-called friends suck his life away.

This is much more unlikely because our plan is not parasitic in nature. I’m not, rather, the person we nominate, to send to fame isn’t just going to spread his riches, he is going to utilize the infrastructure of his fame to build the rest of the people’s. It is brilliant and absolutely without flaw. This isn’t the “come mooch off me” plan for life, it is the “let’s not waste an opportunity and only let idiots like the Kardshians and Perez Hilton be famous for nothing when we can all do it” plan.

The How:

We have to work together to make one of us famous. We have to violently enforce our will upon the outside world and take fame. We have to spread and push the name of the individual we are peddling with tenacity. Through voracious and relentless work towards a common goal we can raise one person to stardom regardless of what they are actually capable of doing that would solicit fame. The details need to be hashed out, but the premise is sound.

The Who:

As I have alluded to, this person needs to be of sound mental stature and able to deal with the pressure of riches. He needs to be convincing at convincing people he deserves to be famous. He needs to possess some intangible quality associated with people of fame. In short, this person must be of great character and willing to serve the people. Even shorter, I nominate myself.

Remember I’m doing this for you — I am your sacrificial lamb and we are about to usurp the way this world works.

Let me know?

I just wanted you to know, because I have been holding it in for years….

I Want to be Happy For You, But I am Having Trouble Making it My First Priority

Please Don’t Be Like Me: A Study in How I Have Trouble Being Overly Critical

Or Finally,

I’m Insecure, So Excuse Me While I Look For Ways to Bring You Down to an Acceptable Level of Average…

I chose, No, I am Happy For You, I’m Serious….Just Not All the Way, because I think this sounds a bit kinder towards the object of the statement. I want to go down in the records as being a kind and welcoming man, but I also want to be painted with honesty, and so should you. I want to think that after reading this, you walk away thinking, “Hey, Heath is just like me, and maybe, we all need a little work,” or most likely, “Sweet, I am not the only one who has trouble with being a human.”

Congratulations, you’re normal. What I am talking about is the same emotion we feel when we see the trashy looking soul that won a zillion dollars in a lottery we played, but lost. It is the same lottery that you had already fantasized how you would spend the money should you had won, and more so, how you were going to impress all around with how respectable and responsible you were in your fiscal prowess. But now, because you lost, you spend the next fifteen minutes of your life wasting it on playing the winning guy’s miserable existence out in your mind. Immediately, you flash forward ten years in this guy’s life and hope that he is desperately addicted to meth or coke; that he took out a million dollars in ones and gave it to a stripper at the local club, only to show up on the news after being beaten by the stripper’s ex-boyfriend; her ex-boyfriend recently learned that the love of his life and baby’s mama, Cinnamon, was seen philandering with that guy who won the millions—he, in an attempt to save his pride that had been stripped away like Cinnamon’s last thong on stage at TD’s Gentlemen’s Club, took his frustrations out on the subject of our fantastical voyage into the future, and, oh by the way, he stole the last bit of his coke, and found the briefcase full of ones that the winner had intended to use to convince Cinnamon to escape with him to a better life; subsequently, her boyfriend leaves the miserable winner in the gutter, face down, mumbling garbled phrases of longing for simpler days when his worst worries consisted of how he was going to afford the next six pack of Natural Light from the 7-11 down the street and still be able to buy another carton of cigarettes…you know, the bare necessities.

You quickly insert into this unfortunately lucky guy’s life an ineptness that is so profound that he will not be able to function as a normal person, because he has never dealt with real responsibility…not the kind you have. Oh. My. God. You could have done so many more responsible things should you have taken home the millions.

That is what I am talking about. We humans spend a lot of time making sure that we are doing okay. To a large extent, this is relatively harmless, at least towards others. It is a thought process we utilize to maintain an operational level of self-esteem and self-concept. Why did that guy deserve millions? It must be because he is going to be a parable for something larger to the world. He is the proverbial example of “be careful what you wish for.” Now that you have denigrated the dude’s existence, you can go on and be successful. This is the average man’s way of not murdering people out of envy or jealousy…we do it mentally and then we move on. Admit it. None of you are happy for the guy. If you say right now that you are, then you are the worst type of person….dishonest—and there is a level of Hell that Dante built especially for you…

And to a much smaller scale, we do this every day in our normal lives. The good news is that the victims of our little murders are generally not people we know and care about.

Girls, it works this way…It is the girl you see at the mall, who is dressed to the 9s and looking good…but maybe, a little too good for a trip to the mall, maybe a bit too revealingly clad, and you can tell this girl is as superficial as can be and that her entire existence is to get attention from men. You should be happy she is confident and pretty, right? Not in my world. She is looking at the same type of clothes you are and moves on to an area you are not interested in, but you kind of meander that way just so you can find the flaws in this little, under-dressed tramp…You examine her from top to bottom, you notice that she holds her bag, a certain way, that her make-up is a bit too thick….oooooohhhh there it is, this girl is hiding her real face from the world. Satisfied that you have deconstructed this girl sufficiently and kept your self esteem levels at functioning levels, you walk by her and say, “Girl, I just love your hair, it frames your face so well….” And then the girl knows you looked at her face…she is effectively neutralized.

It is what we do. Please tell me it is what we do…I want, so bad, to be normal…Personally, my “mental murders” are probably a bit over the top, but that is who I am. I am a man who constantly enters into imaginary fist fights with people and I win all of them. Usually the imaginary fights are the beginning of my mental destruction of whoever deserves it at that moment. Imaginarily, I have fought and won hundreds of battles. They have taken place in gyms, bars, bar restrooms, libraries, walking into work, and on Interstate 95 just outside my truck during a traffic jam. I have beaten many a redneck just for looking weirdly at me when they pass me by at Wal-Mart—all in my imagination.

The best part about my imaginary beatings is that they are all imaginary. No one ever gets hurt except the imaginary victim, and let me tell you, none of the imaginary victims were even close to imaginarily beating me. In the end, these imaginary conquests are just as much a part of me as the personality that you all see and hear. I cannot help what goes on in my insecure little brain. The imaginary fight is an unbelievable stress reliever for me, and an absolutely great way to boost my self-actualization levels. Have there been innocent victims on my imaginary battlefield? Sure, but such is life in my imaginary landscape. I have no time to get caught up in the “guilt game.” And guess what, I am a well functioning member of society. Imagine people who don’t function well and their inner thought life. I bet it is a scary, scary place. I contend they, too, have imaginary fights, but unfortunately, they cannot separate the two existences. Also, let’s be honest. I am undefeated in my imaginary world. My real world fighting experiences don’t always pan out as successfully….

To be completely honest, this is the part of me I hate the most. It is the part of me that reminds me that I am insecure about being among other humans. Worse still, it is the part of me that gives power to others over my existence. I hear other people say great and nice things to others, and I cannot help but harbor some skepticism towards what is being said simultaneously in their inner monologue. So, you can see, I project my inadequacies on others, again in hopes that it makes me more normal.

The Good News:

I know I do it. I know that I am probably going to continue to do it. However, I want you to know that many of the people I am closest to now started out as a person I tried to marginalize through my mental processes. This means that the feelings I have are not really affecting my ability to relate to them once meaningful discourse occurs. So, I am Happy for You, Just Not All the Way.

I am a work in progress. I will keep moving towards perfection, and along the way, I will probably mentally murder thousands, but I will be fine. I will write about it and be open with you people.

I just wanted you to know, because I have been holding it in for years.

The restroom with the romantically lit changing table, nestled in the dark corner of the handicap stall was more attractive than practical to me. I should have known. It would, however, become the infamous locale of my first public diaper change. Like Chernobyl, Mount Vesuvius in Pompey, Mount St Helens, Omaha Beach, and so many other explosive landmarks related to less than happy occurrences in humanity’s illustrious history, this romantically lit changing table, nestled in the dark corner of the handicap stall would become a place of infamy.
Such an unassuming changing table extended from the rear wall of the roomiest stall, in an elegantly lit bathroom, where candles caused shadows to flicker and creep across the walls marking my movement from the entryway to my pending doom. Darkness came to gather in the corner of the stall and ultimately settled over the innocent looking changing table smothering any existing light and dulling it to an orange glow.
Reaching out my hand and placing the perfectly organized diaper bag on the cozy table, my finger grazed the top of the hard plastic meant to hold a soiled and yet sleeping baby girl. Sleeping for the moment….The resulting cold permeated through my hand resonating outward, inward, and upward following paths forged in the womb decades ago. It should have been the omen I needed to turn away–my impetus to seek refuge elsewhere, but inside the darkened catacombs of my brain, came a reassuring echo. The echoing voice should have been the omen I needed to turn away, because it was the same voice that has failed me repeatedly, relentlessly and reliably. The voice was there at the grocery store and told me to steal that candy and sealed my fate. I heard its words tell me to drink the beers that made me run when the cabbie came. The voice is pleased to meet you, I hope you guessed its name….
My daughter rested in my left arm with her head kind of hanging off of the side like a drunken sailor being carried back to his ship after an all night bender by the shore patrol. She wore a onesie covered in dancing kittens made of the softest fleece Target could import from China. I remembered the steps leading me to this moment, and the looks from the other diners at this fine establishment with an equally fine changing table, nestled in the dark corner of an elegantly lit restroom. My walk was met with the approving eyes of mothers at other tables. Their smiles seemed to say, “Look at you, fine sir, taking an active role in caring for this child…” I nodded at them in recognition of their recognition of my contribution to my child’s rearing. I was proud and knew that, in me getting this changing right, I was showing my wife that we were still normal and could function outside of our home. This moment had to happen, and I had to be successful, because the world hinged upon the outcome; the entire world hinged upon this single instant in my life.
Changing the child is a routine that offers little forgiveness. The child cares not whether she is wearing a diaper and will do her business even if it is not convenient for the individual changing her. I know that this is true because earlier in the day, Whitney had been very kind in explaining to me that my method for changing the child was flawed. I was surprised at the detail with which she was able to describe the flaws in my style; furthermore, I was surprised at the rehearsed nature of her suggestions. Whitney spent quite a bit of her suggestioning on the amount of time I leave the baby without any diaper beneath her when transitioning from old to new diaper. I remember thinking, “What does she know? I am a winner and I am not going to be trifled by suggestions.”
The stage was set; the players were in position, and the show was about to begin. You enter into the changing process happy. You are happy because you are doing something to help your child be more comfortable. I hate sitting in my own urine, and therefore, I do not want my child to sit in her urine–it seems logical that this child would be extremely happy to not be sitting in their own urine. I learned in the elegantly lit stall that a baby girl is just as illogical as a grown one.

All Hell Breaks Loose

My routine is simple: I undo the bottom portion of the onesie and fold it backwards so that it is not directly underneath what I call the blast zone. At this point, I am ready to make the move and remove the diaper. Things are going so well to this moment. I remove the straps from the diaper, grip her feet together and gently lift her little butt off of the soiled diaper to remove it. Again, complete success. Flashback to the cold I described earlier in overly, and unnecessarily verbose hyperbole. That same cold was about to travel through her tiny cheeks paralyzing her body and causing all hell to break loose even with the thin paper changing pad I put down to pad the plastic. The resulting chain of events has changed the course of diaper changing history. Initially, this baby girl was stunned by the cold and relatively silent, but her face contorted into that of an old man, and in the candlelit orange glow, I thought her face was a cherry red hue. To increase the cold factor two times, I forgot to warm the baby wipe with my hands before “prepping the landing zone” for the new diaper. It didn’t seem to increase the old man face, so I continued. In the slowest possible manner, I turned my attention to the new diaper.
Diapers come all folded in a manner conducive to packaging into the smallest container possible, and this in itself is not a huge issue, but the fact that I left the diaper in the bottom of the diaper bag, is. I pulled the diaper out, extended the diaper to the correct proportions for applying, and I looked back to beautiful baby girl. To my surprise, laying quiet and warm, on top of the folded up legs of her onesie, in a pool of her own urine, was my daughter. Urine. The amount of pee was unreal. It was like a urine-soaked crime scene. The folded up onesie had absorbed a great deal of the urine, but there was still excess enough urine to pool off of the sides of the table, making splashing sound as it hit the tile floor, which echoed through the elegantly lit bathroom. I picked up the child and looked onto the carnage from above. There was no doubt about it, my daughter would not leave the elegantly lit restroom in dancing kittens. Her onesie was the first thing to die that day–the second was my pride. Maybe Whitney would think it was normal for a changing to take 20 minutes….Maybe Whitney would not remember that it was dancing kittens, and would accept little monkeys without question. Maybe, if she did recognize these small details, she wouldn’t immediately connect the dots and ask if I waited too long to get the new diaper under the baby….
I cleaned up my mess. I wrung the urine out of the dancing kittens. The torque from my wringing of the fabric had left the dancing kittens looking like a bunch of white people dancing on the club floor. I dressed the baby in the spare onesie with little monkeys and said, “Monkeys look a bit like kittens,” and I walked out from the elegantly lit restroom into the cacophonous conversations of diners chatting on the path towards my table. I could see the look on Whitney’s face from forty feet away. I swear I saw her mouth the word, “monkeys?” inquisitive tone and all. How did this woman see monkeys from that far away. I tried not to make eye contact and just pretended all was normal. Whitney leaned in and smiled at the baby and said in a happy sounding, make your baby smile kinda voice, “daddy didn’t listen to mommy, did he……” I stayed quiet and thought, “stupid dancing kittens…..”

I just want you to know, because I have been holding it in for years……

(I did not take any of these pictures; conversely, I cut and pasted them from random news sites on the internet, this is my best effort at citing them)

This is what women do, people—all of them. If you are a female and reading this, I am not a she-hater, I love you, but I am acknowledging my conquering. Once a wild beast out gallivanting around the globe, I was lasso’d, wrestled to the ground, and hog tied by a fine ass woman. She was not mean or controlling; it took time, I didn’t even know it was happening, but flash forward to today, and all of my secret passwords are derivatives of hers.
I used to have my own PIN numbers, but at some point in the past, which I cannot put my finger on, I chose–let me repeat, I chose that things would be simpler if I just adopted hers. Not in front of me, but in a room, dark and silent, Whitney paid ceremonial homage to her conqueror heritage the day this happened. The ceremony was short, but respectful of a history full of women who have gone before her–all of them proficient in the art of domination.

(This is actually a pretty accurate depiction of Whitney. I mean, who wouldn’t let her drag them back to a cave for some Cro Magnon crazed relations…..)

So, here we are, 2012, soon to be 13, and another one bites the dust. Maybe, another two bite the dust, fallen victim to fine ass women. In English classes, we do a lot of discussing and writing about characters suffering from the greek term, Hamartia. The term denotes an individual’s “tragic flaw,” but when one writes a greek term first and then defines it for his reader, he or she is immediately more credible. Trust me, I have made a living trying to illustrate my credibility. Well, people, here is a shocker, which I have alluded to before, most men are suckers for attention from fine ass women. A strange phenomenon occurs in a man’s brain when a fine ass woman engages him in any way, shape, or form. Ask my wife, who is a fine ass woman, we crumble, we invite you places, we make deals with the devil, and we entertain our darker angels. This hamartia doesn’t have to ruin you. If you can understand it, you can beat it. There exists men who do not crumble under pressure, but there are others who, when entertained by a fine ass woman other than the fine ass woman who conquered them, fail. This is their tragic flaw. Pictorially, and very simply,

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Heroes fail, and in the case of most heroic men, it comes at the hands of a woman…..

Luckily for us men, most women are like my wife and conquer kindly, and are not trying to bring down nations, at least to this point, but this essay is on the great and evil conquerors, and I am going to layout before you specific literary and historical females who conquered with malice. But understand this, woe is the man who doesn’t understand that the woman whom he loves, honors, and obeys, has conquered him with great efficiency and skill. Men, this is a woman’s world, and we are but victims of their device. Like the cat batting at a toy dangling helplessly from a string, we are hanging at the mercy of a woman. Understand your plight, men, lest you find yourself thinking you are actually in control .

Again, and for the sake of being repetitive as a literary device, because I have heard that this is what writers do, women are trained conquerors. They have been doing it since the dawn of time, billions and billions of years ago in caves, I am sure, and continuing throughout all of history to today. It is a trait of evolution that the female species has developed and passed down from generation to generation. Women are hand-made to bring man down, and they are growing more and more efficient in their role as trained conquerors. Some women use their power for good and kind of conquer their man in a manner in which we men do not even understand is happening…this is called marriage or long-term relationships. The best and nicest of women have conquered their man. There is the exception, of course, the bone headed man, that traipses around bragging of his unconquered status, but he is a rarity, and usually not functioning. They are the men who you can find in a studio apartment selling elves, dwarves, magic potions, and other World of Warcraft awesomeness on eBay.

I guess in order to do this right we have to start at the woman who ruined it for everyone….

Eve

And so it begins, and how fitting that the first woman ever would bring down mankind….I could be chilling on the other side of the fence separating the heathens from us angelic men looking out at a bunch of suffering women laboring through pain, and all other types of horrible things. All the women would be working on stuff and dealing with the whole living in sin thing, whilst I frolicked from tree to tree sampling fruit we were allowed to eat and hanging around with wild animals that live in harmony with me…..I have to believe that if Adam could have just stuck to his convictions, the man upstairs would have sent down a much less fallible female for him to hang around with. As each subsequent woman failed, they would be cast out to hang out with Eve. Instead, here we are partaking in a perpetual cycle of eating the preverbal apple, all suffering together.

Delilah

One of my favorite examples of what Santana sings about in the hit song, “Evil Woman.” Taking advantage of a man while he sleeps is the lowest of the low. You know how this story goes, but I offer you a weird bit of irony. I once went to a show in Vegas that re-enacted the Sampson and Delilah story; however, this specific version of the biblical drama was enhanced with the addition of the usual Vegas-style topless girls. As the tragedy unfolded, and Delilah systematically brought down Sampson, I was systematically being distracted by a woman’s breasts. In retrospect, I find it amusing how easy it would have been to cut my hair and steal my strength. I am a weak, weak man.

Lady Macbeth

There exists no better example of a woman exerting a diabolical level of control over a man. Macbeth, an already successful and affluent member of society, convinced by his wife that it was not enough, began killing just about everyone. The blood of children, women, and all sorts of innocent people flowed freely in this Shakespearean play, and this blood is on one woman’s hands. The best part of this play is the complete mental breakdown Macbeth experiences on his trek to placate his demanding and evil wife. A terrific read and worth your while, but more importantly, another example of women as conquerors.

Cleopatra

Cleopatra was probably as smoking hot as any biographer currently bedding retired generals. What’s great about Cleopatra is that she pretty much conquered everyone by being smoking hot. It is really that simple….ask Julius Caesar.

As far as I know, there is only one man who cannot be conquered. Like the beastly leviathan that cannot be caught or destroyed, one man has withstood multiple women’s attempts, and thrived through it all.

If you think about it, I left out so many other easy examples. According to my sources (wikipedia), there are about 3.3 billion women on this earth, and I just didn’t have enough time for a picture of all of you.

I saw the teenagers out tonight, and I noticed one thing. Besides the fact that none of them wore respectable clothing and most decided skinny jeans were a great idea, all teenagers now are kind of weird and unruly. I don’t think I was ever this bad as a teenager, myself. I don’t want to get you all hyped up first thing on a Sunday morning, but these teens were… maybe, you should sit down before you read this…these teens were, well, they were being loud in the mall. I had to usher my pregnant wife away from the craziness of these teens and their reckless bantering back and forth. I made eye contact with everyone of them, and my eyes said in a stern and unwavering manner, “STOP BEING LOUD IN THE MALL!” It would have worked except these teens were looking through their bangs at me. They were Bieber-Blinded and therefore did not get the full on effect of my enraged stare.

There was this specific band of teenagers that kept converging on my wife and my journey through the mall. Once, the teens had hijacked a shopping cart from some poor store owner and decided it would be a good idea to put the fattest member of their group in the cart and push him or her around (could have been a girl, but the boys dress like girls, and I don’t want to offend this teen and make him or her want to shoot up a school or something). They all laughed and carried on like they were the first to think of this—like, as if teenagers of yesteryear were so inept that we were never put together enough to grab a shopping cart and push a fat kid around.

I love being hypocritical in my views of teenagers. I think as 30 plus year olds, we earned our hypocrisy. Furthermore, I think that teenagers today are so awkward and goofy that their trouble is just annoying. I know that I am different. I know that I am a man now, because I look at teens in groups of three or more, and I cast judgment upon them, and they are all GUILTY. My looks are no longer based in a nostalgic longing to feel young and unbound by the chains and shackles of life that we attach ourselves to in our adult years. Maybe, I look at these teenagers being loud in the mall and think, “this is the best idea you could come up with, huh?”

I also worry about how my daughter is going to want to dress. I have to believe that every father and mother of the girls I saw in the mall yesterday started out with a hard-line stance against phrases written across the asses of their daughters. In the very least, and maybe more importantly, these parents were dead set on the idea that the asses of their daughters were going to be covered completely…

The teenagers all walk around the mall like they own the place. They looked at the pregnant lady to my right as if she was too slow and needed to get out of the way. And, while I agree that the pregnant lady to my right is very slow, she has a right to waddle down the same path these kids do. Who is more likely to spend money? Probably me, and I proved it. The teenagers all have conversations. I hate when teenagers have conversations, because their conversations are superficial, I can just tell. I wanted to walk into the crowd of loud teenagers conversating* superficially and get all of their parents’ names and numbers and call them. I would say, over the phone, in a very rhythmic and well enunciated tirade, “Do you have any idea what your kids are doing right now? Well, I will tell you. Your kids are being loud in the mall. If that isn’t bad enough, they are doing it dressed like court jesters and whores.” That would show them.

Teens in groups are all slowly marching to trouble or some lawless behavior. Townships and cities need to make rules addressing this and they need to act quickly. Even if your teen is a calm and collected responsible nerd, when he or she is in a group of three or more like-minded fools, trouble is a second away. Sometimes nerd trouble is worse than pushing a fat kid in a shopping cart. Just saying.

The teenagers are a powerful force because they have no fear. Fear is important in a society. I know they have no fear, because they wear stupid clothes. Fear starts in the home. I recommend instilling fear into your children today. We need to rise against this barbaric movement of teenagers and their loudness. We need to take the power back. We need to stop fooling ourselves that our kids are trustworthy and are all on the sacred and pure walk to heaven. They are not. They are at the mall right now and they are loud and obnoxious.

Step it up parents. Get up, Stand up! It starts by taking away their skinny jeans and making these kids dress like real people, like we did in the nineties. Make them wear corduroys, and make them put on a pair of Doc Martins and dress like decent people preparing to be men and women. If they want a different hair style make them shave the sides of their heads and let the top grow long, that was okay, because it was cool. Remind them that the music they listen to is nothing when compared to bands like Smashing Pumpkins, Foo Fighters, Sound Garden, Alice in Chains, and bands that actually had lead singers that used their man voices. Do your best and may God have mercy on your souls…

I just wanted you to know, because I have been holding it in for years.

*Conversating should be a word. Conversing is cool, but conversating is more cool.

Weekends are where life really happens in the Phillips household. Weekdays are like a pause in what we really want to do around here. As fall sets in, the mood in our home always brightens. Everything about the season is happy to me. I think the fall reminds me to slow down and relax, to look out the window and see the show that nature is putting on, and to look at my wife and remember who it is I married. She is a fun, fun lady, and during this time of year, we do a lot of “us” stuff. We work together around the house, we set it up to look like a harvest scene, and most importantly we enjoy ourselves. Don’t get all weird with me, I am not going to spend the rest of this blog writing about how incredible my relationship is, because those of you who have been reading my blog, already know that. I am going to tell you about the training I have put my wife through. She has passed a rigorous program that would have broken a lesser woman. I started thinking about this earlier this week and felt like you needed to hear what it is like to be married to me. I think you all would love it (being married to me), and therefore you need to catch a glimpse.

Being married to me is awesome. I am not a braggart; I am an honest man who tells stories. Being married to me is awesome (This is my thesis). Besides being generally easy to deal with, I am an inciter of chaos. I induce into an otherwise relaxing lifestyle—turmoil.

I like spending time with my wife. I like sitting around with her while she reads smutty novels, and on occasion, I like to pick the book up, and read the passages in a very dramatic manner. Dramatic renditions of raunchiness are awesome, and they make Whitney very happy. She loves it when I do this and shows me by giving me the “stink eye.” I am going to teach my daughter to do this as well. Once a husband or child grabs the book and begins an overly dramatic monologue entitled “Saddle up and Ride (an actual book title I found on our kindle),” it probably gets a little difficult for the reader to re-engross themselves in their fantastic voyage through word porn. If there are any men reading this, I challenge you to do the same; it will either lead to a bonding moment between you and your wife, or your wife will never feel comfortable to read around you again. Either way, you have succeeded in the one thing all husbands love to do….terrorize their wives momentarily. Don’t mistake what I say for wanting to hurt our wives. We don’t want to hurt them; we want to drive them crazy. Only crazy to a point, and then we want our wives to chill out and prepare themselves for the next battle. (This may actually be my thesis).

We do it in little criminal actions. A great example: In our home, Whitney is a Nazi-like organizer of the refrigerator. She has a very systematic method for how she sees things fit together inside, and she hold briefings on them every time she opens up the door. On shopping days, she will actually address the press in the middle of our house where she will outline the proper shelf for beverages, dairy products, where snacks will reside, and where random products that don’t fall in line with other things will go. It’s simple. Whitney would have done well in Napoleon’s Army as she has a knack for ensuring her orders are always understood at the lowest level of the chain of command. They sound something like, “Heath, in your brain, I know you think ground turkey is a dairy product, but here in the real world it is not and, therefore, should find itself in the lowest drawer of the refrigerator.” Sometimes when I go to the fridge, I put things back in there in the wrong spot on purpose, and I get an amazing sense of rebelliousness swelling from my soul to the tip of my head. Then I go and hide, and I wait, and I wait, and then it happens. Whitney goes to the fridge and notices that her yogurt has been moved to the “random fridge item” shelf. I come out from hiding, I walk past and say this, “Whitney, you know yogurt is a dairy item, right?” I continue, “Why would you put it in the ‘random fridge item’ area?” Because Whitney is pregnant, she can only remember 17 minutes before the current moment. I have used this to convince her she is slowly losing it. As I walk away, she is mumbling to herself the same way the people in the movies act like when they are in the crazy house. This is a victory for me—a yogurt induced victory.

Adding to her frustration, I like to pretend that every time she explains to me where items should go in the fridge is the first time she has explained it. Furthermore, I like to patronize her by saying things like, “Dude, this is weird, I was thinking the other day how disorganized the fridge is, and that we needed to get on the same page in this house.” If there is one thing my wife loves, it is being patronized—this is just another thing I recommend all husbands start doing in their homes…good times. This is all out of love. I love messing with my wife, because she is the only person in the world who could deal with it.

As Whitney has progressed through this pregnancy, things have become funnier and funnier to watch. One of the things that has quickly become a great past time for me is watching her walk, stand up, sit down. It is similar to when a turtle is put on their shell and just kind of flailing their arms about hoping they can develop the momentum to propel themselves into the standing position. Before you all think I am calloused, I help out. From wherever I am sitting, I cheer her on and time the evolution to see if she is getting better at it. Awesomeness.

A final thing that I have liked to do is slowly reveal ways I got in trouble when I was a kid. I explain to her about the time I stole people’s mail around the neighborhood. I remind her I am a convicted shoplifter, I remind her that I joined a gang in Idaho Falls, Idaho. We were the “gang that wore denim jackets.” I wore headgear and in a gang fight, which subsequently got shoved through my cheek. How many gangsters were ginger kids with headgear? I was. I remind her that I one time took a knife to our neighbors tree and shaved off all of the bark. Apparently, the neighbors weren’t happy with the makeover. I remind her that my high school friends and I were drunkards who would have sold our siblings if it meant we could get a twelve pack of Milwaukee’s Best (higher alcohol content). I tell her that I used to torture my sister about her hair and how she had the exact same hairstyle George Washington had. What kind of ginger kid with headgear would have the audacity to make fun of other kids? This guy. I tell Whitney, of the time I was taking another friend to baseball practice and wanted to change the cd out in the car and wrecked it into a jeep. Right as the car hit the jeep, Tres Delinquentes’ “Step into the Madness” blared over the car stereo and it could not have been more appropriate. I tell her all of these stories and then remind Whitney that our child will pay us back the hell we caused our parents; get ready.

Tomorrow I will tell you the story of how I convinced another blogger to give me a blogging award.

I just wanted you to know, because I have been holding it in for years.

Day 20 In a Trailer: The Natives continue to grow restless. We have gone without a home for almost four weeks, and we are surviving—barely. I am not sure whether Whitney doesn’t want to start a torrid love affair with the weird guy who mows the lawns for the campground. Their relationship started innocently when he was voyeuristically looking in on The Whitness while she was getting ready for the day about a week ago. It is the way his face looks like he was an extra in the movie, “The Hills Have Eyes” that seals the deal for the man.

Day 22 In a Trailer: Whitney has reached an all-time low. I believe she has voted me off of the island. Today, I left my shoes in the car and tried to maneuver barefoot through a gravel paved driveway to get to them. The agony was too much for my soul to bear. Every step was met with the excruciating pain of a thousand rocks digging into the virgin flesh of my feet. I called out to my wife hoping she would come to my rescue. She would be my pregnoid in shining armor. She emerged from the trailer as happy as I have ever seen her. “What did you do now?” I responded in a whimper, “I need my shoes; they are in my truck just there, not too far away, can you please grab them.” Without complaining, Whitney retrieved my shoes and started walking toward me. Our eyes connected and I tried to convey the gratitude that I had for her in the moment. In her eyes, she held a blank stare void of any emotion. I stood quivering with my blistered feet desperately wanting for my shoes. Whitney neared my position, and bent over putting my shoes on the ground—a foot beyond my reach. She stood up and looked down on me in silence. Turning to walk away from me, I heard her exhale a sigh of breath. It was a breath of satisfaction.

Day 24 In a Trailer: Whitney has tried to kill me three times. In an argument over whether what we are doing here is camping or living, I believe I started to win. Utilizing my vast understanding of rhetoric and logic, I had cornered Whitney. She was left with nothing to say. I was certain that I had convinced her that if we were really camping this would be more exciting, but since we are actually living in this trailer, it has lost its luster. The exact phrase I used was, “If we were really camping, this would be a much more fun experience, and it would be a much better place to be at.” Her response to me sums up why I can never really beat Whitney in anything. She said, “Heath, I am not interested in the details as you see them, I am interested in the facts….” She quickly followed with a sentence that nailed it for her, “And Heath, don’t end your sentences in a prepositional phrase if you want to be taken seriously in an argument…”

Day 25 In a Trailer: We had our first work social at my boss’s house. I learned one really solid thing about myself. Given an opportunity to innocently say something that would sound so wrong, I will do it. Whitney and I gathered around the buffet style food table and started filling up our plates. Whitney does buffets differently than most people do. She likes to knock it out in one shot. She gets her main course and simultaneously gets her dessert. I like to go back like seven times and just graze on things for about three hours. Anyways, Whitney had her little plate of main course dessert combo. I noticed people gathering around the buffet table and decided I needed to be the center of attention, now if I could only come up with something to say…..Here is the statement that will live in infamy: “Whitney (said as loud as I can), we don’t need to get it all in one sweep, damn.” I look to the crowd for validation with a look that said, “c’mon people agree with me…am I right, or am I right?” The crowd scattered. All I could hear was a collective grumble of disappointment in my statement. I am brilliant. The look on Whitney’s face was one that said, “later, in the car ride, on the way home, I am going to kill you.”

Day 26: Last Full Day in a Trailer: I make it exciting. After the argument I won/lost earlier in the week, I thought I would try to make this feel like a camping experience. I started a fire. We got marshmallows out and made s’mores. It was fun. As the fire was really getting going, I noticed it was billowing smoke. I looked to Whitney, who had made knife hands and was attempting to waft smoke away from her by rapidly moving both hands in front of her face. She looked at me in anger and said, “Heath, this is how you kill a baby.” End result: Camping is awesome!

I just wanted you to know, because I have been holding it in for years.

Boxes are piled everywhere. Tape being pulled from the roll makes a screeching sound that is now beginning to echo throughout the emptying house. Through the window of the back door, two dogs watch confusedly, as movers move in and out of their home. You can smell the cigarette smoke clinging to the workers as they pass by you weaving in and out of the crooked towers of boxes. Deadlines: must meet deadlines. A small lingering anxiety lurks just above the Phillips’ House. Moving day is here and you cannot run from yourself today. Couches are gone; you just ate a chicken breast while dipping it in hot wing sauce. You are trying to eat everything in your kitchen which makes for very random combinations of food. For mid morning snack, you had olives meant for martinis and shredded cheese from a bag. Delicious. You next think about putting warm water and rice in your mouth and holding it there until it softens just to get rid of the rice you have acquired over two years.

Why do you have so much vegetable oil? These are the moments you curse the invention of Sam’s Club. You think to yourself, “How many children are starving to death right now that would love to have the vegetable oil excesses that you have in your pantry?” Will I be arrested if I go out back and pour the vegetable oil into the yard? It is a vegetable…

The second you see them pack up your treadmill you think, “damn, I could be running right now.” The following second you spend trying to remember the last time you used the treadmill for running and not just hanging clothes on while you ironed.

All is not lost. You have a plan, and your plan is stellar. You are going to put your pregnant wife, Shepherd Dog, Blue Heeler, and three legged Chihuahua right into the middle of a three day road trip. To make things easier, you have a 33ft RV that when actually placed on the road feels 50 feet plus. Your RV has been nothing but a source of excitement between your pregnoid wife and you, but you think to yourself, “that’s just because we haven’t spent enough time in it….yeah, that’s it.” You ask the truck driver packing your stuff up for advice on pulling a trailer and the advice he offers you leaves you wanting. His answer, “Don’t piss the truck drivers off.” The second he says this, you think of the movie Joyride where an evil and vengeful trucker takes his wrath out on a couple drivers.

Luckily for you, your wife is pretty good at being pregnant. Yesterday, she watched the packers loading things into boxes and fell asleep because of how hard the work was. Later, you overhear her say to the neighbor, “I know I look like I just woke up, but the movers are here and it has been exhausting.” At this moment, you flash back to earlier when she was sleeping next to you. She was snoring and the movers actually tried to work in silence out of fear of a pregnant woman, which I understand. The movers are here to do a service for you and you appreciate them for it. When one of the mover’s phone rings, she apologizes profusely. You say to her, “no, it is okay, you are working hard.” She replies immediately and without thought, “Sir, I have been pregnant, and she deserves some quiet while she sleeps.” You realize at that moment the following: All women who have bore children are naturally against all men who haven’t.

All women who have bore children are naturally against all men who have not. What a great sentence. You take another bite of your chicken and this time you dip it into mayonnaise. You do this because you have two jars of mayonnaise, and you have to get rid of it. You think about leaving a box of random noodles (you find six boxes of angel hair pasta), mayonnaise, and vegetable oil on your neighbor’s doorstep and then running. You wish that your wife was here so you could watch her pregnantly trip over boxes and try and fit through areas her belly won’t let her smoothly travel through, but she is not, because she has abandoned you for girl time with friends. All friends of women who have bore children who have also bore children themselves are natural enemies of all men who have not.

You look down and dip your chicken into vegetable oil, because you have to get rid of it…